


The Once and Future Captain

by Canon_Is_Relative



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 06:32:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The trouble for Malcolm Reynolds is that he doesn't know when to hold or drop a grudge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Once and Future Captain

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies to T.H. White on young Mal's behalf.

_The trouble for Lancelot_ , he read as a kid, _was that for him, God was a real person_. Mal read those words in a borrowed paperbound book during his love affair with literature that lasted about as long as the lender, fella name of Ronnie, lasted under his mama’s roof. Them storybooks were precious as bibles to Ronnie and the ranch wasn’t much of a bookish place. Education was held valuable, mind, but imagination was the word they used on the man who contrived to get himself locked in the henhouse. But Mal liked having books around, made him feel like a modern Peter Pan, hiding from his chores up a tree with a book. 

Young Mal thought Lancelot’s trouble didn’t sound much like trouble at all. If God was as real as King Arthur or Guenever, it was stupid he didn’t just pick one and leave the others alone. The night Ronnie got himself kicked out Mal went to return the book and asked with a snigger why, if Lance was so sly on God, he even bothered with Gwen at all. With a painful kinda laugh, Ronnie said keep the book, maybe read it again one day.

The trouble for Malcolm Reynolds is that he doesn’t know when to hold or drop a grudge. He’ll see no fuss in dealin’ again with a woman once tried to shoot him, but he won’t give ground on a Shepherd wantin’ to say grace out loud at his table. So when the grudge he carries is against God Himself, you know the man’s gonna be bearin’ it for the rest of his life. God, bein’ as real to him now as Inara, or Serenity, has a memory long as Malcolm himself, and is even less likely to admit to any wrongdoing. 

**Author's Note:**

> For my [Daily Drabble Challenge](http://canonisrelative.livejournal.com/23306.html). 300 words. Prompt: Valley


End file.
